You are here

In the news

Phineas Baxandall at the US Public Interest Research Group, a non-partisan advocacy, says the trend toward privatising the enforcement of traffic laws poses inherent conflicts of interest. Municipalities typically sign up because they are strapped for cash. When the contract involves revenue-sharing between the vendor and the municipality, there is an incentive to issue more tickets than necessary. But even flat-fee contracts can cause problems, if the system is implicitly tuned to recoup that fee by, in effect, setting a quota of tickets to be issued.